Ok, hoping someone can help me. Months ago I was looking at a marker set that was pretty expensive ($200-300 iirc). There were at least 3 sets by this brand. One was a basic set, one was flesh/natural tones, and I can't remember the third. I am pretty sure they were not COPICs and they definitely weren't prismas. I really am not thinking they were PITT artist pens either. anyone have an idea of what they were?

Anyways, I didn't have the money then for them but would like some markers now just to play with.

ETA: I saw them on Dick Blick, but I can't find them now...?

ETA 2: Maybe they were Copics? Those seem to run about $350 per set and I see 4 sets of 72, which could be what I was thinking of. The flesh tone set is $500 though! That's kind of insane.

I have a couple of Copics, and they are really nice for building colours and layering. The tips are sooo nice. But they're really expensive. I waited until Hobby Lobby had a 40% off coupon, then went and bought a single marker haha.

That said, I use (or used to, I haven't actually drawn anything in over a year so they're probably all nice and dried out now) Prismacolours. I like Trias okay but holy cow there's a ton of colours! I bought a massive set for dirt cheap at a flea market one year and used them once because I was so overwhelmed, I could hardly decide which colour to use. I ended up selling the set to another artist instead and just stuck with the Prismas. I didn't find a huge difference between the two anyway honestly, but it probably has a lot to do with how I use my markers. I do a lot of blending, plus layer marker and pencil together. So I think it really depends on how you're using them. I have heard people don't like Copics because it's 'grainy' but I think if you're layering (which is their strong point IMO) you aren't going to get that, the colours will smooth themselves out as you blend...

I got to play with some concentrated watercolors the other day at a workshop, not sure the brand. They were really neat but so different from my watercolors. Those might be a good purchase, never thought of using them for graphic art type things. I tried to use them as a regular watercolor and they were just so bright it didn't work. I usually use Winsor Newton watercolor tubes.

I have a prisma set of markers but they are dried out pretty bad. I really could not use them well when I got them and ended up probably wasting it, but it's been about 8 years now since I got them. So I think I probably would have a better idea of where to start. I had a lot of issue with being able to see the lines where I layered the marker over itself.